Last week, the House health budget subcommittee passed a plan that excluded Medicaid expansion, as well as other Snyder proposals. Among those are dental services for low-income children, health and wellness initiatives, mental health and substance abuse services for veterans and an infant mortality program.

These folks are tough.

The expansion of Medicaid is part of President Obama's Affordable Care Act, what most Republicans, including state Sen. Mike Nofs at a recent local event, derisively call "Obamacare."

Under the legislation, Medicaid - the joint state-federal government health insurance program for lower-income Americans - would be expanded to cover those making 133 percent of the poverty level.

For the first time, low-income adults without children would be guaranteed coverage through Medicaid. In Michigan, it would add an estimated 500,000 people to the Medicaid rolls on Jan. 1, 2014.

And it would do so at a bargain. A report released in October by the nonprofit Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation and several economists at the University of Michigan concluded that the state could save hundreds of millions over a decade even while increasing enrollment by more than 600,000 people.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report in July that estimated the additional cost to states from the expansion to be a 2.8 percent increase over what they would have spent on Medicaid from 2014 to 2022 without health reform. But that report doesn't take into account the savings under the expansion.

And there are consequences for failure to pass the expansion. A report from the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation warns that hospitals in states with limited Medicaid coverage will face severe deficits as they continue to treat a high volume of uninsured patients.

More moderate Republicans are promising that the proposal isn't dead yet. State Rep. Matt Lori, the Republican chairman of the subcommittee and supporter of Medicaid expansion, told The Detroit News that "people just need to be educated on the whole thing."

If a Republican governor can't get through to them, perhaps our local legislators will be more receptive to local residents and community leaders.

People suffering from lack of access to medical care isn't an abstraction in our community, but an everyday reality.

Tell our representatives in Lansing that it's an unacceptable reality, and tell them to pass Medicaid expansion for Michigan.

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Editorial: Expanding Medicaid is the right thing to do for Michigan

It's not rocket science: Expanding Medicaid in Michigan will save money, and it will save lives. What's going on in Lansing, however, is political science.